Some of you have probably been waiting for some news on the current status of Fortress Connected. This blog post is here to answer that!
Development has been VERY active, and we've been making major strides in progress! Major strides...
Before diving into this, we want to make some things clear. Quite a lot of the unfinished content from old-FC will not remain in the new SDK version (such as most custom classes and items).
This means we are working on a clean slate, going in a bit of a different direction than before, while still keeping the core concept of Fortress "Connected".
Regarding our Left 4 Dead maps, the entire No Mercy campaign is playable from start to finish complete with cutscenes, car alarms, infected, pickups... everything!
Along with that, multiple Left 4 Dead elements and systems have been adapted to Team Fortress 2:
- A director-like system for spawning infected and other items around the levels
- Some common and Special Infected from L4D1:
- Smoker
- Boomer
- Witch
- Tank
- Temporary Health system similar to pain pills.
- The ability to be downed/incapacitated and revived by teammates
- While downed, you can use whatever weapon you were holding while downed. This means you can provide cover fire while being revived.
- While downed, you get 300 HP.
- While downed, you will have a glow effect that all teammates will be able to see, and the player will automatically call for help.
- After being revived, you will have temporary health that will decay slowly until you heal
- Custom animations for being downed or grabbed
- Weapon pickup system like Left 4 Dead, allowing players to use custom weapons placed around the world.
- Custom throwables
- A "gore" system for the infected. (From *Fortress Zombies*)
- When shot in the head or arms, those parts will blast off the infected!
What else is there to do for Left 4 Dead?
- The original launch plan was for just the No Mercy campaign. However, with how fast we've managed to get the first campaign in a playable state,
we may do more campaigns for launch as well!
How about the Half-Life stuff? How's that going?
- Half-Life 2 + Episodic coop is in a fairly stable state. However, there are still a few issues that are being worked on.
- A lot of the Half-Life 2 maps have been modified with anti-rushes, new co-op specific content, hidden locations, and more!
- As of right now, Half-Life: Source support is out of the picture until we hear back from Valve for permission to use the public Half-Life code. We'll keep you in the loop here.
- Full Half-Life 2: Deathmatch support with Team Deathmatch and planned FFA modes!
- Full NPC sapping, use your spy items on Combine turrets, manhacks, scanners, and more!
How about new FC specific content? What's going on with that?
Fortress Connected is a mod that is built on a mod of a mod of a game, and we feel as though we should allow for modders to have their fun with our game as much as they please
This is why Fortress Connected has an official Steam Workshop, allowing for mods, maps, weapons, and just about anything else you could make for the game to be uploaded and shared.
For modders and mappers, we have a new system called "EDT" that allows maps to be modified with just a text file, not requiring mappers to edit VMFs or recompile.
This means that servers or workshop mods could use custom edits of maps. This, plus VScript, means you can do just about anything!
Along with EDT, we also have a new game mounting system that allows for mounting just about any source game with a TXT file.
One example of such that we have tested is giving full functioning map logic to the levels from Day of Defeat: Source. This was done completely with EDTs and only needing the content mounted from your steam library. Completely code free!
These TXT files can be uploaded to the workshop to allow for custom mod support. (For example, Build 2001, Hunt Down The Freeman, Black Mesa Source, etc)
Alongside supporting mounting of various mods and games, we will also have full MapBase support meaning MapBase mods will work alongside Fortress Connected!
This include mods in which you play as the Combine, such as Entropy Zero 2, thanks to our support for Blu Team to enjoy co-op campaigns as well!
And you would be sorely mistaken to think that all our eggheads in the devteam have been doing has just been goofing around with things like "optimization" and "bugfixing".
We on the team have been working hard on cooking up some new toys for the players to mutilate eachother and the Combine with, including but not limited to:
- The Hunter's Chopper, a Heavy primary that we tore off a crashed helicopter in the canals!
- The Homing RPG, a Soldier Primary that was kindly donated by our allies at the Resistance!
- Various buildings for the Engineer, inspired by previous concepts in the community, such as The Bounce Pad and The Mini-Dispenser.
- A new sapper, allowing for any smoking sneak to turn any Combine tech to his side!
And on top of all this, there will be many alterations to the weapons you've already got in co-op gamemodes. For example:
- The Razorback now protects from headcrab attacks and antlion guard charges, and the danger shield reducing damage taken from Xen fauna.
Alongside the new armaments, we will also be featuring new ways to make the Combine feel the squeeze, such as:
New gibs, allowing for Demoman and Sniper to literally make Metro Cop heads roll, and for other explosives to rip apart any unsuspecting Combine or alien in your path!
Taunt kills: Pick up that can? No, POW!. You can use any taunt kills from TF2 within FC with extended support for NPCs!
And what better way to end off this blog than telling the players that they will be able to track their progress, both in campaigns and in overall game achievements!
Thank you for reading, stay tuned for more in the future!
- FC Team